Every couple of generations, a prehistoric species of nuisance
crawls out from beneath the ideological or religious stratum it was
misbegotten under, to inflict itself upon productive human beings who
already had more than enough annoyances and irritations in their
lives.

These pests, these moral parasitesH.L. Mencken described them
best when he said that they wake up in the middle of the night, sweat-
soaked and trembling with terror at the notion that somewhere, someone
might be happyhave all sorts of hobby horses they're accustomed to
riding, but their all-time traditional favorite, hands down, is Demon
Rum.

The tendency to blame alcohol for most or all of civilization's
shortcomings has been popular for a long, long while. Losers with no
lives of their own probably railed against beer-drinking in ancient
Sumeria. But it began to hit its stride in America shortly after the
War Between the Statesfor good reason, as we'll see directlyand
achieved the acme of its political influence in the days following
World War I, when the women had won the vote, and too many of the men
were out of the country, defending what they mistakenly believed was
freedom.

From 1919, when the Volstead Act became law (in those days, before
the Bill of Rights was transmogrified into the dirty joke it's become
today, it required a Constitutional amendment to screw with people's
lives on such a scale) until its repeal in 1933, it became illegalProhibitedto
make, transport, sell, buy, or consume alcoholic beverages.

Naturally, instead of establishing a paradise on Earth, as its
loopier and more fanatical advocates led even emptier heads to expect,
Prohibition actually motivated individuals to drink more than they
had (many of them for the first time in their lives, some because they
didn't like being told what not to do, others because being told what
not to do is the best kind of advertising), and brought us such other
social innovations as turf wars, drive-by shootings, sleeping with the
fishes, and all the other trappings that we now associate (for good
reason) with the even more completely idiotic and infantile "War on
Drugs".

My grandmother was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance
Union for decades after Prohibition was repealed, and although she was
a registered Democrat and an enthusiastic Franklin Delano Roosevelt
groupie, voted for Prohibition Party Candidates well into the 1960s.
The woman also dressed and undressed in her bedroom closet, even when
she was alone in her house, and referred to the intimate moments that
are inclined to occur between a wife and her husband as her "bedroom
duties".

That'll give you an idea. Call it ad hominem, I call it character
revelation.

These days, among the latest Bible-thumpers and tambourine-bangers
(although they may try to deny it, I know the type when I see itand
so do you) are the so-called Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, stark
naked neopuritans, latterday Prohibitionists who have learned to jerk
the big red "For The Children" lever right along with all the rest of
the life-controlling goosesteppers that democratic societies seem to
spawn.

Like Marxists and Flat Earthers, what they preach sounds good if
you don't listen too closely or think about it too much. But there's
more.

A long time ago at a Libertarian Party regional conference (or was
it a national committee meeting?) far away, one of the guest speakers
was the renowned scholar Ralph Raico. Ralph's subject was pornography,
and what he said then has stayed with me through all of the decades
since.

Imagine, Ralph said, a tired and lonely old man. For one reason or
another, he has no wife, no family, no one to help fill the final
years of his life with something other than loneliness, despair, and
sadness. The only bright moment in his existence is an hour spent in a
theater showing dirty movies. It's all he's got and all he ever will
have.

What kind of evil person would take what little he has away from
him?

A feature article I read recently in the local fishwrap wasted
several column inches of perfectly good newsprint on what a bad thing
it is that young peoplehigh school and college kidsget ahold
of alcohol and drink it. America, claimed the buckethead who wrote the
item (I know she'd want me to mention her name) is saturated with
alcohol.

The woman betrayed an embarrassing ignorance of history. She
didn't seem aware that alcohol consumption in this country has been
plummetting in recent years, or why (hint: it's nothing to do with mad
mothers).

She didn't seem to know that early on in America's history, most
likely because it wasn't very safe to consume the water, people were
accustomed to drinking prodigious amounts of alcohol (a quart of
whiskey a day wasn't unusual) and that the liquor Martha Washington
bought for one party could keep a small city inebriated for a week,
today.

She didn't even know that about sixty percent of the population of
Soviet Moscow was considered alcoholicauthorities railed against
vodka endlesslybecause that's what socialist hopelessness does to
people.

In short, this article was exactly the kind of politically correct
piece that could only be written by a former inmate of the public
schools.

Today's kids are like that old man in Ralph Raico's story. Deep
down inside, somewhere, they are aware that, thanks George Bush and
Hillary Clintonthe taxes politicians are so fond of extracting
from those who actually do something for a living, the regulations
that bind the population hand and footthey have no real future to
look forward to, nothing but endless grubbing on the assembly line or
in some blind cubicle for corporationsand the prospect of endless
war.

And bucketheads like this woman begrudge them a beer?

Tell you what, Buckethead, for just a while, why not spend the
same energy you use up keeping kids from drinkingand smokingon
making this a free country again. Give kids a future to look forward
to.

Then come back and talk to me about alcohol.

We'll have a drink on it.

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 25
books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas,
The Probability Broach, Hope (w/Aaron Zelman), and his collected
articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased
through his website "The Webley Page" www.lneilsmith.org.
Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel Pallas
was recently completed and is looking for a literary home.

Neil is presently working on Ares, the middle volume of the epic
Ngu Family Cycle, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo" May.
The stunning 185-page full-color graphic-novelized version of
The Probability Broach, which features the art of Scott Bieser and
was published by BigHead Press www.bigheadpress.com has recently won
a Special Prometheus Award. It may be had through the publisher, at
Amazon.com,
or at billofrightsPress.com.